Thanksgiving Hymns

Bought in Jerusalem in 1947, in Two Lots

E. L. Sukenik of the Hebrew University bought this scroll in Jerusalem in 1947, among the three of the first seven Cave 1 scrolls that went to him rather than to the Syriac Orthodox archbishop who bought the other four. It reached him in two separate lots and in poor condition, and what Sukenik published in 1954-55 was a partly legible thing: a run of columns and a heap of loose fragments. The exact tally usually repeated — so many columns in the first group, so many plus sixty-six fragments in the second — traces only to an encyclopedia article and is not printed here as a figure. He gave it the name it still has, from a rabbinic word for thanksgivings, because so many of its psalms open with the same formula — 'odekha 'adonai, "I thank you, O Lord." The Israel Museum catalogues the object as parchment from Qumran Cave 1, late first century BC to early first century AD, accession 95.57/1-51; the dimensions on its record, 32 cm high and 61.5 cm long, are for the catalogued piece and not for the whole roll, which was far longer.

What a reader meets today is not what Sukenik published. The scroll was reconstructed twice over, independently: H. Stegemann worked out the original order in a Heidelberg dissertation of 1963, E. Puech published his own reconstruction in 1988, and the critical edition that finally carried Stegemann's work into print — completed by E. M. Schuller after his death — appeared in 2009 as volume 40 of Discoveries in the Judaean Desert. The reconstructed roll has twenty-eight columns. This matters for anyone reading older books about it, and it is the sort of trap that quietly wrecks a footnote: column references written before 2009 are in Sukenik's numbering and do not correspond to the numbering everyone now uses. A citation of "1QH 5" in a book from the 1970s and a citation of the same words today will not be the same column.

What the Hymns Say

The psalms are the prayers of someone who thinks very little of himself and a great deal of the God he is addressing. The Israel Museum prints one of them on its own object record, and it is a fair sample of the whole: "I thank Thee, O Lord, for Thou hast placed my soul in the bundle of the living, and hast hedged me about against all the snares of the Pit. Violent men have sought after my life because I have clung to Thy Covenant. For they, an assembly of deceit, and a horde of Belial, know not that my stand is maintained by Thee, and in Thy mercy Thou wilt save my soul since my steps proceed from Thee." That opening image is lifted straight out of Scripture — Abigail tells David that his life will be "bound in the bundle of the living" — and the hymns are made of such pickups throughout.

The texture is worth noticing because it is how these psalms think. M. Dhont's study of column 16, which is freely readable, traces one long metaphor of a garden: a shoot and a planting, which is the language of Isaiah 60:21 and 61:3, and a tree whose roots reach water, which is Jeremiah 17:8 and the opening psalm of the Psalter. There is a difference from the biblical thanksgiving psalms all the same, and M. B. Johnson puts his finger on it: the biblical ones look back on a rescue that has happened, and these look forward, thanking God for a deliverance still expected. Several of the compositions carry a heading marking them for the maskil, the instructor charged with teaching the community — an office the Community Rule describes, and a detail that will matter a great deal in the next section.

Who Is the "I"?

Sukenik himself floated the idea that these were the personal writings of the Teacher of Righteousness, the founding figure the Damascus Document and the Habakkuk Pesher both refer to, and three German dissertations turned that suggestion into a system. G. Jeremias in 1963, J. Becker in 1964 and H.-W. Kuhn in 1966 divided the collection into "Teacher Hymns" — a cluster of first-person compositions specific and personal enough to be the Teacher's own — and "Community Hymns," the rest, taken to voice the ordinary membership. For decades that division was simply how the Hodayot were taught. It is worth saying plainly when it was built: before the scroll had been reliably reconstructed, and before the fragmentary Cave 4 copies of the same collection were available to check it against.

Both of those things arrived, and the scheme has been under sustained pressure since — not from an opposing camp, but by subtraction. One limit on what follows should come first rather than last: the article that still defends the Teacher Hymns hypothesis, M. C. Douglas's in Dead Sea Discoveries in 1999, could not be opened from here, and Crossref carries no abstract for it. So this is an account of the pressure, from the people applying it, and not a fair fight staged between two sides. A. K. Harkins argued in 2008 that the "Community Hymns" were not one thing and needed dividing again, and later took to calling them "non-Teacher Hymns," a label that names them by what they lack. C. A. Newsom went further in 2021, and her own summary is worth quoting whole because it gives away as well as takes: "While that evidence largely confirms the distinctiveness of the group of compositions associated with the Teacher, which are clustered in cols. 10-17, the evidence undermines the cogency of a category of 'Community' hodayot" — which should, she argues, be assigned to the maskil rather than to ordinary sectarians. M. B. Johnson would drop both labels, on the ground that nothing in the scroll identifies its speaker as the Teacher at all. Notice what Newsom does not say: that the cluster in columns 10-17 is distinctive is one claim, and that the Teacher wrote it is another, and she grants the first without the second. A further question sits underneath the whole debate. A. K. Harkins has asked in print whether the first group of Community Hymns was ever materially part of this scroll at all — that is the question her 2018 article puts in its own title — and warns that the run of modern editions projects "an illusory material unity that the Cave 1 hodayot did not enjoy in antiquity."

Scripture references

• 1 Samuel 25:29 — "Bound in the bundle of the living" — the phrase the hymn quoted on the Israel Museum's own record opens with
• Jeremiah 17:7-8 — The tree planted by water, one of the images column 16 builds on
• Isaiah 60:21 — "The branch of my planting" — the shoot and planting language the hymns reuse
• Psalms 130:1-4 — A biblical psalm in the same key: out of the depths, and forgiveness that is with God rather than earned

Sources

• Holding institutionThe Israel Museum, Jerusalem — The Thanksgiving Scroll (1QHa) — The Israel Museum, Jerusalem — Shrine of the Book · The museum's own object record: "Written in Hebrew", "Qumran, Cave 1", "Late 1st century BCE - early 1st century CE", "Parchment", "H: 32; L: 61.5 cm", "Accession number: 95.57/1-51". It also prints the translated hymn quoted in section two. The live page renders only through JavaScript and returns an empty document to any script, so this record was read through the Internet Archive's copy of it. Batch 10 cut this article partly because no accession number could be found at either holding institution; this is itSupports: The material, findspot, date, dimensions, accession number, and the hymn quoted in section two
• ScholarshipM. B. Johnson, "The Ritualization of Psalms in the Dead Sea Scroll 1QHodayotᵃ" — Michael B. Johnson, Hebrew University of Jerusalem · Ancient Jew Review, 11 May 2022. Read in full, footnotes included; an editorially reviewed venue rather than a peer-reviewed journal, and it is a synthesis rather than a primary edition. Source for Sukenik's naming of the scroll and his suggestion about the Teacher of Righteousness (citing Sukenik, DSSHU 1955, 39), for the Jeremias/Becker/Kuhn trio and the dates of their dissertations, for the twenty-eight reconstructed columns, for the contrast between anticipatory and retrospective thanksgiving, and for Johnson's own position that both labels should go: "there is not a sound evidential basis for identifying the author or speaker as the Teacher of Righteousness"Supports: The naming of the scroll, the history of the Teacher Hymns hypothesis, and Johnson's own position
• ScholarshipC. A. Newsom, "A Farewell to the Hodayot of the Community" — Carol A. Newsom, Emory University · Dead Sea Discoveries 28:1 (2021), 1-19. The body is behind Brill's paywall and was NOT opened. What is quoted in section three is her own abstract, published with the article and read in full through Crossref — including the clause granting the distinctiveness of the columns 10-17 cluster, which is the half an unfair quotation would drop. Her book The Self as Symbolic Space (Brill, 2004) was also not opened and is not characterised here · paywalledSupports: Newsom's 2021 position, quoted from her own abstract
• ScholarshipA. K. Harkins, "Another Look at the Cave 1 Hodayot: Was CH I Materially Part of the Scroll 1QHodayotᵃ?" and "The Community Hymns Classification: A Proposal for Further Differentiation" — Angela Kim Harkins, Boston College · Dead Sea Discoveries 25:2 (2018), 185-216, and 15:1 (2008), 121-154. Both bodies are paywalled and were NOT opened; both author-written abstracts were read in full through Crossref, and the phrase quoted in section three — "an illusory material unity that the Cave 1 hodayot did not enjoy in antiquity" — is from the 2018 one, whose title asks "Was CH I Materially Part of the Scroll 1QHodayota?" and is reported here in those terms rather than glossed into a question about Sukenik's two lots, which the abstract does not raise. Note that the same abstract calls Stegemann and Schuller's reconstruction "monumental" and "an invaluable scholarly resource": she is qualifying it, not attacking it. Her book Reading with an "I" to the Heavens (De Gruyter, 2012) was not opened and is not characterised here · paywalledSupports: Harkins's subdivision of the Community Hymns and her question about the scroll's material unity
• ScholarshipM. C. Douglas, "The Teacher Hymn Hypothesis Revisited: New Data for an Old Crux" — Michael C. Douglas · Dead Sea Discoveries 6:3 (1999), 239-266. The modern defence of the hypothesis section three describes as under pressure. It could NOT be opened from here and Crossref carries no abstract for it, so this article names the argument and does not state it. That is a gap in the article and it is better recorded than papered over · paywalledSupports: That a defence of the Teacher Hymns hypothesis exists in the scholarly literature
• ScholarshipH. Stegemann and E. M. Schuller, Qumran Cave 1.III: 1QHodayotᵃ, with Incorporation of 1QHodayotᵇ and 4QHodayotᵃ⁻ᶠ — Hartmut Stegemann and Eileen M. Schuller, with translation by Carol A. Newsom · Discoveries in the Judaean Desert 40 (Oxford: Clarendon, 2009). The critical edition and the source of the column numbering now standard. Print only, not opened here; its bibliographic detail and its relation to Stegemann's 1963 Heidelberg dissertation and E. Puech's 1988 reconstruction in the Journal of Jewish Studies are taken from Johnson's footnotes 4 and 18Supports: The reconstruction of the scroll into twenty-eight columns and the numbering used today
• ScholarshipM. Dhont, "A spring of living waters in a pool of metaphors: The metaphorical landscape of 1QHᵃ 16:5-27" — Marieke Dhont · HTS Teologiese Studies / Theological Studies 77:1 (2021). Open access, read in full. Source for the garden imagery of column 16 and its allusions to Isaiah 60:21 and 61:3, Jeremiah 17:8 and the first psalmSupports: The scriptural imagery described in section two
• EncyclopediaWikipedia: Thanksgiving Hymns — Read. It is the only place any of this article's sources describes the physical state of the scroll as Sukenik received it — "two different groupings of textual evidence", the first of twelve columns and the second of "six columns and sixty-six fragments" — citing E. H. Merrill. Because that is a single encyclopedic source and because the count as commonly retold fuses the two groups into one figure, section one describes the state of the scroll without printing the numbersSupports: The two groups in which the scroll reached Sukenik, and why no column or fragment count is printed

Further reading

• The Israel Museum: The Thanksgiving Scroll (1QHa)
• M. B. Johnson, "The Ritualization of Psalms in the Dead Sea Scroll 1QHodayota" (Ancient Jew Review)
• Wikipedia: Thanksgiving Hymns

Reflect

These prayers thank God for a rescue that has not happened yet. What would it change to pray that way this week?